2010-09-09
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“Walk vs Run”, featuring Ian Davenport’s Poured Lines installation under the railway bridge in Southwark, by Slawek Kozdras. From the Guardian’s Been there photo competition.
2010-03-31
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Walking Men is a public art installation by Maya Barkai. It wraps construction sites in a giant collage of pedestrian traffic-light icons from around the world.
Good to see one of Berlin’s hatted men there (although he seems to be the wrong colour).
2010-03-04
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Westminster really seems to have some sort of fever for redesiging its major junctions at the moment. Piccadilly Circus is next, according to the BBC:
Piccadilly Circus will be made pedestrian-friendly as part of a £14m revamp, which will rid the busy central London junction of guard railings.
Westminster Council approved the plan that will see the area go back to what it looked like in 1963, as more than one kilometre of railings are uprooted.
A central island will be built along Piccadilly and Pall Mall and two-way traffic will be reintroduced.
Meanwhile, the firm that planned the revamp of Oxford Circus last year (previously) reports that it’s worked out:
The Atkins-designed Oxford Circus diagonal crossing has proven an instant success with reduced pavement congestion, a doubling of walking speeds and one in six visitors using the diagonal routes.
2009-04-17
All Change On Oxford Street
There’s been coverage this week of the start of work to rework Oxford Circus, installing diagonal crossings and expanding the pavements (BBC News, Londonist). Obviously it’s hard to imagine this will be a bad thing; anyone who’s tried to get on or off the tube at the station there will have cursed the crowds of people who just seem not to fit the available space.
There’s also a video at the West End Company (mirrored on Vimeo by the Architect’s Journal, and included above) who are funding the work along with Westminster Council.
Elsewhere on their site, they talk about their plans to improve the eastern end of Oxford Street, which is obviously going to change a fair bit as the Crossrail and Tottenham Court Road station projects continue.
On that subject, I’m not sure I noted the coverage in January of the replacement of the Centre Point fountains with a new entrance to TCR outside. (The fountains, meanwhile, might end up in Hampstead.)
All change, indeed. However, unlike the diagonal crossing (due in November), the TCR rework isn’t opening for a good few years. (I’ve not found a date anywhere, except 2017, when Crossrail is due to open. Surely the new ticket hall will open before that, though?)
